{"id":901253,"date":"2026-09-22T12:08:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T12:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/901253\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T12:08:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T12:08:22","slug":"cost-of-raising-children-in-australia-why-parents-are-being-priced-out-of-having-larger-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/901253\/","title":{"rendered":"Cost of raising children in Australia: Why parents are being priced out of having larger families"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wendy<\/p>\n

September 22, 2026 \u2014 7:49pm<\/p>\n

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AAA<\/p>\n

The cost of raising children has become so high that parents and those hoping to become them are being forced to shrink their intended family size, Australia\u2019s leading parenting advocate says.<\/p>\n

New data from national advocacy organisation The Parenthood shows the cost of raising one child per year now sits at around $17,800 a year, and two or more costs more than $36,500.<\/p>\n

\"FrancescaFrancesca Steele and her elder chidlren, Banjo and Jeanie, with dog Snoop.Justin McManus<\/p>\n

Georgie Dent, a mother of three and chief executive of The Parenthood, will address the National Press Club on Wednesday warning that Australians are at risk of being priced out of parenthood. It comes two days after Treasury released its latest intergenerational report<\/a>, which forecasts the nation\u2019s steep birth rate decline<\/a> will reshape the economy in coming decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe birth rate has plummeted<\/a> and a significant part of that drop is not in desire, it\u2019s in affordability,\u201d Dent told this masthead. \u201cParents are genuinely beside themselves;<\/a> so many families are very genuinely squeezed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The intergenerational report predicts that the national fertility rate will drop to 1.34 by 2065-66 (a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed for the population to be replaced from one generation to the next without migration), meaning deaths would outnumber births. This compares with the stated wish of Australian men and women to have more children<\/a>: \u201cMen want exactly two kids, and for women it\u2019s 2.1 \u2013 but that\u2019s not what\u2019s happening,\u201d Dent said.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Genevieve<\/a><\/p>\n

Australia is already wrestling with rock bottom birth rates, which fell by 25 per cent<\/a> to a record low of 1.48 in 2024 from a peak of 2.02 in 2008.<\/p>\n

Dent says that without better access to childcare<\/a>, a big increase in paid parental leave and more support from workplaces, this will only worsen.<\/p>\n

The Parenthood\u2019s research, commissioned analysis from consultancy ConnellGriffin, found that over the last two decades, the cost of running a family has risen 32 per cent higher than family incomes grew over the same period.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat it actually takes to run a family has risen 134 per cent, but the money that lands in the bank each week has risen only 102 per cent [in the last two decades],\u201d Dent will say in her Press Club address. \u201cChildcare has climbed from 27 to 33 per cent of the cost of raising a child.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previous research commissioned by The Parenthood also found the struggle for parents in regional, rural and remote areas to access childcare is so great that 86 per cent \u201care experiencing financial stress as a result\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The costs measured by ConnellGriffin are higher than those released by the Australian National University\u2019s Centre for Social Policy\u00a0in June<\/a>, which estimated<\/a> one child costs roughly $13,000 per year, and two costs $23,000 \u2013 a figure that equates to about $391,000 over 17 years.<\/p>\n

Public policy changes such as increasing the minimum paid parental leave scheme from the current six months to the OECD average of one year, and providing \u201cgenuinely universal\u201d affordable, accessible, quality childcare delivered by a professionally paid and supported workforce would free parents both to work the hours they need and afford subsequent children, Dent said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2020, only 12.5 per cent of centre-based [childcare] services had average fees above the fee cap. Today, it is about 43 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dent has campaigned for 18 months for a national Early Childhood Education and Care Commission to oversee delivery of quality, accessible universal childcare.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Parenthood chief executive Georgie Dent will address the National Press Club on Wednesday about the urgent need for reforms to help support Australians afford the family sizes they wished for.Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n

Given one-third of Australia\u2019s current workforce has dependant children, and Treasury\u2019s Centre for Population estimates that if people\u2019s fertility intentions had been realised between 2001 and 2022, Australia could have had an additional 881,000 births, Dent will argue that doubling parental leave and boosting childcare will have a meaningful impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemove the childcare subsidy and fund it like schools,\u201d she told this masthead on the eve of her speech. \u201cThese changes would enable people to afford the number of children they could really like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Daughters<\/a><\/p>\n

Mother of three, Francesca Steele, who recently wrote to Dent about the incompatibility of federal and state childcare subsidies, will observe the speech from the home she shares in Jan Juc on Victoria\u2019s surf coast with her husband and three children aged 11, eight and two-and-a-half.<\/p>\n

Steele, an associate director of human rights and social impact at KPMG, and her husband, Simon, a winemaker, say that although they consider their family to be financially comfortable, the rocketing cost of living<\/a> has forced them to cut back on holidays and children\u2019s extracurriculars, among other expenses.<\/p>\n

Of cost of living increases recently, Steele says, \u201cit feels exponential\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very privileged, [but] when we look at our monthly income, costs and outgoings, we\u2019re actually going backwards,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Many parents also need to help support elder relatives as their children are entering their teen years, because of failures or gaps in the aged care system and costs associated with specialist dementia care, she said.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Rachel<\/a><\/p>\n

Families like Steele\u2019s, who are navigating this and the fact that mothers\u2019 incomes and job promotion opportunities have historically been curtailed by the need to cover childcare, are pushed to find the extra money to also support their parents\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t go out to eat or get takeaway food, we\u2019re not spending money on extravagant things like clothes; we live a pretty simple life,\u201d Steele said. \u201cI have no idea how other people are surviving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Start the day with a summary of the day\u2019s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"WendyWendy Tuohy<\/a> is a senior writer focusing on social issues and those impacting women and girls.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"September 22, 2026 \u2014 7:49pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-901253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}