Executive summary: For women, the life stage at which combining employment with other commitments is most challenging is when they are raising their children. This report focuses on this time, providing information about mothers’ employment from those with babies through to those with primary school-age children. The report provides some broad descriptive information about mothers’...

This paper explores trends in types of child care for children aged under 12 years old with employed mothers in Australia, from the 1980s through to 2011, to examine how the roles of different forms of care provision have changed in this environment of increasing maternal employment. Abstract Many industrialised countries, Australia included, have experienced...

This research report investigates whether children in regional areas experience a "tyranny of distance" or a "tyranny of disadvantage". In other words, are the gaps in children's development in regional areas compared to children living in the major cities explained by their distance from the major cities (remoteness), or is it because many regional areas...

This report presents the key findings from the Survey of Recently Separated Families 2012. This study examined the experiences of 6,119 parents who separated between 31 July 2010 and 31 December 2011. The research, commissioned and funded by Attorney-General's Department, focuses on parents whose main use of family law system services occurred around 2011 and...

In 2009/10, almost two-thirds of Australian mothers of children aged under 15 years were employed. This employment rate remains below that of many other OECD countries, indicating that there may be potential for increases in maternal employment in Australia. This paper explores the characteristics of employed and non-employed mothers, to identify the factors that contribute...