Babies are about love. They are also about money

If we want to replace the population we currently have, the total fertility rate needs to be 2.1 babies per woman and partner. Right now, and in an Australian worst, we are down to 1.66 babies per woman compared to 1.97 babies per woman in 2009. It has been below replacement level since 1976.

Australia is a shitty place to have a baby. Which is surprising since the general population clucks over babies like mad and asks the most embarrassing and intrusive questions. And when I say general population, I mean me. ANU demographer Liz Allen says I'm typical.

"People not even related to you want to know about your fertility intentions," she says.

So if we are so baby mad that we are asking perfect strangers when they plan to procreate, why is the setting for parenthood so terrible?

The fact is, babies are about love. But they are also about money. It costs a bomb to have one, and it doesn't get any cheaper.

As executive director of parenting lobby group The Parenthood, Georgie Dent puts it like this: "Australia lacks the necessary policies and social infrastructure to support families when we transition from adulthood to parenthood."

Too right. Our jobs are precarious at the best of times, but just try being a pregnant woman who wants to take paid parental leave. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) revealed in 2018 that not even half of the employers with 100 or more employees offer paid primary carer's leave. What is with that? How is it even possible in 2021 that employers can't manage paid parental leave for the primary carer? What kind of nation do we build if we can't rely on our employers to recognise that paid parental leave is actually good for business and good for retention of employees?

And when the WGEA looked at the average length of parental leave, it was tiny. On average it was about 10 weeks. Do you remember 10 weeks? That was about the time the baby finally dropped one of multiple nighttime wake-ups. When I had my first child, paid parental leave was six weeks. I went back to work part-time so I could manage emotionally, but it was a very tough time financially (although my husband's boss did give him a pay rise to celebrate the birth because he didn't think women should return to work. It would have have to be a bloody big pay rise to make up for a second income in a housing market which demands two incomes).

It is true there is government-funded parental leave now which is at the minimum wage. Might work for some families. And men don't take much parental leave anyhow, although the WGEA's research shows they take more employer-funded leave than government-funded leave. Might have something to do with the relative "generosity and flexibility". Giant props to my son-in-law's employer, NAB, one of the big four banks. A senior bloke, who had taken the leave in the past, reminded him paid parental leave was available, so he took it. Thanks to paid parental leave, by the time my grandson goes to childcare, he will be one (and then I get my hands on him for a day a week, yippee!).

Dent says we have the least adequate parental leave schemes in the entire OECD, and even if we get some of that, we are then faced with the hideous experience of trying to get our children into childcare. The high cost of early childhood education is a barrier.

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"Australian families are facing a very expensive battle each and every time they have a child," says Dent. Yep. It was terrible back in the day when I needed it, but it is a helluva lot worse now. According to the OECD, Australia ranks fourth highest in the world for the cost of childcare as a percentage of pay - at just under a third. Heaven forbid you decide to have more than one. And no wonder so many Australian women are backing off the whole idea, or putting it off to much later in their fertility lives when it becomes harder to make the babies, or at least to squeeze in a second one.

Politicians use childcare as a plaything, and reject that women even have a valid or credible view when it comes to the cost of care and the support for families. As Liz Allen, the author of The Future of Us, says, having babies is too hard for most of us.

There is, she says, a lot of public shame when it comes to familyhood. The obligations fall to women, and then there is the pressure of juggling paid work with unpaid work such as housework and caring.

As she says, something has to give, and maybe it's the push to procreate which is where the link breaks. She asks us to consider the implications of the changing climate, the actual climate, which makes the world feel even more apocalyptic, not safe to bring in new lives.

I'm not pushing for women to have more kids. I had three and they are genuinely the light of my life, but it is much harder now than it was when I had my kids last century, despite some moderate improvements in parental leave. It might be fine to encourage women to go into the workforce, but what do governments do to help keep women at work? I have no idea how to fix the problem until we fix the government, and I doubt that is doable. In the meantime, COVID-19 made us all feel more vulnerable. It will be fascinating to see what happens to the birthrate after this plague year.