By Emma Walsh, CEO, Parents At Work
814 hours.
That is the amount of additional time parents with primary school-aged children may need to find each year to bridge the gaps between working hours, school hours, commuting, school holidays and care.
The figure comes from a recent ABC analysis based on a household in which both parents work full-time. Even then, it is a conservative estimate.
It does not include medical appointments, school events, homework, sick days, household work or the endless administration involved in keeping a family functioning. Nor does it capture the particular challenges experienced by single parents, families with children who have additional needs, shift workers or those who cannot access affordable outside-school-hours care.
Parents have always known the maths does not add up. What this figure does is make the size of the gap impossible to ignore.
Families are not failing to balance work and care. They are being asked to make incompatible systems fit.
Where do families find 814 hours?
Parents find the missing hours wherever they can.
They reshape their working days, negotiate flexible arrangements, use annual leave and rely on grandparents, friends or paid care. They take calls from the school gate, work from the sidelines of afternoon sport and log back on after their children are asleep.
Some turn down opportunities, move into less demanding roles or reduce their paid working hours. Others absorb the pressure until their health, relationships or careers begin to suffer.
This is often described as a work-life balance problem, as though individual parents simply need to organise themselves more effectively.
But no productivity app or better family calendar can create 814 extra hours.
This is a structural mismatch between working hours, school hours, annual leave, care infrastructure and the realities of modern family life.
Most Australian families no longer have one adult at home who can readily absorb school pickups, holidays, appointments and unexpected disruptions. Yet many of our systems continue to operate as though they do.
The consequences are significant, not only for families, but for employers and the economy.
Women continue to absorb the greatest cost
Although more fathers are participating in care, women continue to undertake a disproportionate share of unpaid work and make more significant adjustments to their employment.
It is often women who reduce their hours, move into more flexible roles, decline promotions or carry the constant mental load of working out how the family’s time will fit together.
Those decisions are rarely cost-free.
They affect earnings, career progression, leadership representation and retirement savings. They also contribute to the persistent assumption that women are less available for senior roles, while men remain subject to workplace cultures that can discourage them from taking on an equal share of care.
This pattern is not inevitable. It is shaped by the way work, leave, care and career progression are designed.
If Australia wants greater women’s workforce participation, a narrower gender pay gap and more women in leadership, we cannot continue treating the practical realities of care as a private problem for families to solve.
Flexibility matters but it must be genuine
Workplaces are an important part of the solution.
Genuine flexibility can return meaningful time to families. It can allow a parent to manage school pickup, reduce an unnecessary commute or adjust their hours during school holidays.
But flexibility is much broader than working from home.
For employees who must be physically present, it might mean predictable rosters, greater input into shifts, school-aligned start and finish times, job sharing, compressed hours or temporary adjustments during periods of intensive care.
Flexibility also needs to be available to people at every level of an organisation, not only those in particular roles or with supportive individual managers.
Most importantly, it must be career-safe.
An employee should not be considered less committed because they collect their child from school, work adjusted hours or use the flexibility their organisation has formally offered.
If accessing flexibility results in fewer development opportunities, less meaningful work or being overlooked for promotion, the policy is not working as intended.
Employers should examine who uses flexible arrangements, who progresses while using them and who leaves when their caring responsibilities intensify. This can reveal a very different picture from the one presented in a policy document.
Managers cannot solve a structural problem alone
Managers play a critical role in shaping an employee’s experience of work and care.
They need the capability to lead flexible teams, plan around periods of leave, assess performance based on outcomes and respond constructively when an employee’s circumstances change.
But managers cannot create hours that do not exist or solve gaps in the care system through goodwill alone.
Governments also have an essential role.
Families need affordable and accessible outside-school-hours care, early childhood education that aligns more closely with working lives, and leave settings that recognise care does not end when a child turns one or starts school.
We also need to confront workplace expectations that routinely extend beyond paid or contracted hours. Flexibility should not simply allow parents to move work into the evening after completing a second shift of unpaid care.
Making an unsustainable workload more portable is not the same as making work sustainable.
Shared care must be part of the answer
The missing hours should not automatically become women’s responsibility.
Workplaces can help shift this pattern by actively supporting fathers and partners to take parental leave, work flexibly and respond to family needs.
This requires more than gender-neutral language in a policy. Leaders need to model shared care, managers must respond consistently to requests from men and women, and employees must be able to use family-friendly arrangements without career penalty.
When men are supported to participate more fully at home, women have greater capacity to remain in paid work and progress in their careers. Children benefit from stronger relationships with both parents, and employers gain access to a broader and more sustainable talent pool.
This is a workforce-design problem
Australia frequently discusses productivity and workforce participation as though the answer is simply for more people—especially women—to work more hours.
But participation depends on whether work is practically possible.
We cannot ask parents to increase their paid work while leaving them to privately resolve an 814-hour gap between the systems surrounding them.
Nor can we continue measuring workplace commitment through uninterrupted availability, long hours and physical visibility when employees are also raising children and caring for family members.
The answer is not for employers to accommodate every circumstance without question. It is to design work deliberately, consider requests fairly and remove unnecessary barriers to participation.
Families need supportive managers, meaningful flexibility, shared care and workplace policies designed around the full arc of family life. They also need accessible care services and public systems that reflect how people live and work today.
Parents are already stretching their time, reshaping their careers and carrying an enormous mental load to make everything fit.
The question is not how much more they can absorb.
It is whether employers and governments are prepared to redesign the systems that keep creating the gap.
Because 814 missing hours is not a failure of family organisation.
It is a workforce problem and it is time we treated it like one.
