This report focuses on children's readiness for school, considering the role of families, schools and communities as facilitators and inhibitors. The transition from home to school is a major change in children’s lives, being the first compulsory and universal point of contact between the child and broader social institutions. This can be a challenging period...

Maternal employment rates are lowest in the first year of a child's life, as women leave or take a break from employment to care for an infant. Within this first year, however, there is considerable variation of maternal employment rates as some women make their way back to the workforce. This paper explores the timing...

The paper examines how the use of child care, the time parents spend with children, and parental wellbeing relate to parental employment. It looks at four themes: the labour force status and job characteristics of parents with young children; patterns of use of child care and how they vary according to parental employment status; the...

Since September 2003 the Parenting Payment recipients whose youngest child is 13 to 15 years old have been reuired to undertake one or more activities (such as job search, education, training or community work) to develop and enhance their work skills and prepare them for a return to work. Michael Alexander, Jennifer Baxter, Jody Hughes...

Labour force data shows that the employment rate of women who have not-employed partners is lower than partnered women with employed partners. To help to understand why the employment rates might be lower in families with not-employed husbands, Jennifer Baxter analyses women's labour force data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA)...