The Uniting Families Report 2024 is the first in a 10-year series of reports that seeks to explore family life in Australia, especially the families in which children and young people are being raised. The report – which reveals fascinating insights into family diversity and gender roles – is a partnership project between Uniting NSW.ACT and the UNSW Social Policy Research Centre.
BroadAgenda editor, Ginger Gorman, had a chat with two of the report’s main authors, Dr Megan Blaxland and Dr Yuvisthi Naidoo
First of all, what’s the idea behind this report? What is it designed to show or reveal?
The Uniting Families Report celebrates the diversity of families in Australia. To do this, we started with the idea of family practices – that is the things that families do that makes them a family. For many, raising children is at the heart of their idea of family. So in this report, we focused on the family practice of raising children.
Too often research, especially quantitative research, explores the experiences of couple and sole parent families.
But when we looked at the data to see who raises children, we identified many children growing up in other family types, including step-blended families, multigenerational families, and foster families or other kin families. So in this report we also explore the social and economic circumstances and experiences of all these family types.
We also wanted to acknowledge the longer time that many young adults live with their families. Although much research defines children and young people as those under 15 or older than 15 if they are studying, in our research, we included all young people less than 25 years living with family, whether or not they were studying or employed.
We analysed data from the Census 2011 to 2021 and the Household Income and Labour Dynamics of Australia survey 2022. (Unless specified, the following findings come from analysis of HILDA 2022.)
What can you tell us about Australian families and their make-up? What does the report reveal that most people might not know?
We found couple parent families are still the most common – 69% live in couple parent families. 12% live in step-blended families, 11% in sole parent families, 6% in multigenerational families and 1% in foster or other kin families.
However, many families are a mix of these – so a sole parent raising foster children while living with her mum, is both a sole parent, a multigenerational family and a foster family. Similarly, a couple raising one biological child of their own and a child from one of the parent’s previous relationship, and living with an elderly parent is both a couple parent family, a step family and a multi-generational family. It is these webs of relationships that highlight the diversity amongst Australian families raising children and young people.
First Nations families are much less likely to live in couple parent families – only a third (34%). Almost a quarter were in sole parent families (23%), over a quarter in step and/or blended families (27%), and just under a tenth in multigenerational families (9%). Foster and other kin families are also a notable form of family for First Nations peoples at 6%.
Interestingly, when we examined family types in the Census, we found little change in the mix of family types over 10 years. The most notable change was with families with parents in a same sex relationship. The nationwide vote to endorse marriage equality for same-sex couples in 2017 was a significant milestone.
Perhaps as a result, more people identified themselves as being in a same sex relationship after this vote than ever before in the Census. In fact, the number doubled from 70,000 in 2011 to 164,000 in 2021. Most of these adults are in couple relationships without children, but increasingly they are raising children and young people. The proportion of same-sex couples who are couple parent families increased from 11% in 2011 to 16% in 2021. Although data from the Census is limited, same-sex couples belonging to step and/or blended families comprised 5%, while 1% were part of multigenerational families.
Women in multigenerational families were even more likely to feel tired or worn out, and more likely to say that taking care of their children is more hard work than pleasure. Supplied/Fancy Boy Photography for the Uniting Families Report
How is family life marked by gender?
Our findings confirm other evidence that sole parents are more likely to be women than men. We found that 82% of sole parents are women and 18% are men. But we also found that women are more likely to be in all other family types, except couple parent families (in couple parent families there is a 50/50 split).
In step-blended families, adults are 55% women and 45% men. In multigenerational families 60% of adults are women (40% are men) and in foster and other kin families 58% of adults are women (42% men). Unfortunately, both the Census and HILDA are limited in the capacity to explore the families of people with other gender identities.
What can you tell us about domestic labor, caring responsibilities and mental loads in households?
Adults’ experiences of housework and care responsibilities continues to be defined by their gender. In fact, gender shape parenting and domestic experiences more than the type of family they predominantly belong to.
More than half of all women (55%) said that they do more than their fare share of work around the house. Only 35% said they did their fair share, no more, no less. By contrast, only 20% of men said they do more than their fair share. But 54% said they do exactly their fair share.
Adults’ perception of fairness (or unfairness) was even stronger when they were thinking about raising children. Nearly two-thirds of women (65%) said they do more than their fair share. While the same proportion (66%) of men said they do just their fair share, no more and no less.
These proportions are consistent across family types, for both domestic labour and child rearing. The one exception is among men in sole parent families, who are more likely to say they did more than their fair share than other men.
Graphic courtesy of Uniting NSW.ACT.
Unfortunately, we did not have access to data on mental loads, but we can speculate that if women are doing more than their share of the child rearing and domestic labour tasks, they are also carrying more than their fair share of the mental load. In fact, recent research shows the share of the mental load tends to be even more unfair.
Given women are more likely to say that they do more than their fair share of housework and child rearing tasks, it seems probable that women might be feeling resentful. The data suggests this is the case. The HILDA survey asked participants to say how satisfied they are with the division of household tasks on a scale from 0 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied). The mean score for women is 6.65 out of 10. For men, 7.52 out of 10. Women are less satisfied with the division of domestic tasks than men in every family type.
The same is true regarding share of child rearing. The mean value for women’s satisfaction is 7.00 out of 10, while men’s was 7.69 out of 10. Again, women are less satisfied with the way child rearing is shared across every family type.
Your report makes compelling findings in regard to how women feel about family life. Please unpick this quote from your report for me: ‘Overwhelmingly, their [women’s] responses show that women find parenting more challenging This finding is consistent across all family types.’
Survey participants who had parenting responsibilities were asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about parenting. Women’s responses show that they find parenting more challenging than men do.
On every measure, in most family types, women are more likely than men to indicate that being a parent is harder that they thought it would be, that they often feel tired, worn out, or exhausted from meeting the needs of their children, that they feel trapped by their parenting responsibilities and that taking care of their children is more work than pleasure.
Although the mean scores are not high across both women and men, they are noticeably higher for women than men. Moreover, women in multigenerational families were even more likely to feel tired or worn out, and more likely to say that taking care of their children is more hard work than pleasure.
By contrast, in foster and other kin families, it is men not women who found parenting more difficult. This was the case across every measure.
How is gender related to the economic pressures families are facing?
Women’s greater responsibility for child rearing and household tasks is associated with a lower rate of participation in full time work. Across all family types, most adults are engaged in paid employment. While men mostly work full time, women are split between full time employment, part-time, or not participating in paid work at all. Better sharing of responsibilities at home could mean women could increase their earnings and ease some of the economic pressures families are experiencing at the moment.
You do also find some hope. Where and what?
Most importantly, we found that relationships are strong across all family types. Survey participants rated the quality of their relationship with their children highly and reported that children get along with each other. Both these measures are consistently high across all family types. This suggests that no matter the struggles that some families face, all family types provide strong and nurturing relationships for children.
- Picture at top: Supplied/Fancy Boy Photography for the Uniting Families Report
Ginger Gorman is a fearless and multi award-winning social justice journalist and feminist. Ginger’s bestselling book, Troll Hunting,came out in 2019. Since then, she’s been in demand both nationally and globally as an expert on cyberhate and the real-life harm predator trolling can do. She's also the editor of BroadAgenda and gender editor at HerCanberra. Ginger hosts the popular "Seriously Social" podcast for the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Follow her on Twitter.
