The care fracture: How shocking abuse allegations have hit mothers

Two themes emerged in direct messages to career and motherhood advocate Lucinda McKimm from mothers reeling from the news that early learning educators in different states faced 79 alleged counts between them relating to sexual abuse of tiny children.

Fear, and guilt.

Lucinda McKimm runs a popular podcast on motherhood and career and said direct messages to the program reflect how unsettled working mothers are feeling.Credit: Photograph by Chris Hopkins

As well as unleashing rage at alleged perpetrators, the shock exposed a seam of shame and blame – on mothers for daring to leave the house. One that parenting advocates say needs to be dispelled.

“Since the news of the assault allegations broke, people are saying they are genuinely worried to send their kids to day care, and they feel incredibly guilty,” says McKimm, co-host of the motherhood and career podcast, Ready or Not, and mother of two young children.

Though it is 2025, this “all comes under the same cloud of judgment that mums receive when it comes to childcare: that they’re supposed to be home with the baby, that’s what society expects.”

McKimm’s children, aged one and three, are at a small, local childcare centre with stable staffing and a tight community. She does not feel this guilt personally – but is among podcasters, mothering columnists and parenting advocates confronting attitudes that many had hoped were long buried.

The reality is “the over-arching [belief] norm persists that any mum who engages in paid work is doing it because it’s a bit of fun and something she wants, as opposed to something she needs financially or for her, her family and mental health”.

“I have interviewed 150 mums [on the podcast] and the narrative they report is that it’s still mum’s role to raise the kids … Women are carrying so much more invisible parenting load in their heads, so when a news story like this breaks, it swallows women whole.”

Writing on the professional women’s website Women’s Agenda this week, The Parenthood chief executive Georgie Dent also named this mother-blame phenomenon: “In this moment of national grief and reckoning, the last thing families need is guilt piled on top of their fear and distress,” she wrote.

“And yet, some are using this crisis to argue that parents (but mostly mums) should just stay home – as if that’s a real or simple choice for most families.”

The blame and shame comments have been posted online on news articles about the abuse allegations, and in parenting forums on social media.

On the longstanding parenting site Kidspot, columnist Lauren Robinson said she also uses childcare and noted: “I’m sick of seeing that decision twisted into some suggestion of parental neglect.”

Dr Emily Musgrove, resident psychologist on the hit podcast The Imperfects, on Thursday alluded to the resurfacing of the similarly enduring myth “that the mum is available and responsible at all times”.

“My sense is we [mothers in this generation] are getting so much more exposed to guilt because we are violating this idealised mother role,” she said.

Numbers of women working are at a record high, as are numbers of children in early learning centres, supported by government policies encouraging women back to work. That backward ideas about working mothers have re-emerged following childcare abuse allegations has troubled advocates, especially as policies now exist to also support fathers to participate in childcare.

The proportion of Australians grappling with juggling work and family care is not insignificant. In the March quarter of 2025, approximately 1,444,410 children from 1,015,790 families in Australia were using Child Care Subsidy (CCS)-approved care. These children attended an average of 27.5 hours of care per week.

Data from the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows that as of the March quarter last year, 48 per cent of one-year-olds were enrolled in CCS-approved childcare services, up from 39 per cent in 2015.

“We are seeing an increasing proportion of new mothers remaining in employment after childbirth, with the proportion of employed mothers of an under-one-year-old increasing from 30 per cent in 1991 to 57 per cent in 2021,” a spokeswoman says.

But academics including Melbourne University sociology professor Leah Ruppanner say the psychological burden of the tension between government policies – and economic conditions – that encourage both parents to work soon after having babies is still assigned primarily to mothers.

Ruppanner’s book, Drained, on women as the disproportionate mental load-bearers of parenting comes out next year. Anxiety triggered by disturbing childcare-abuse news is likely to also be felt by fathers, she said, but social pressure and responsibility for care of young children is still squarely on women.

“Mothers have an incredible amount of guilt, especially around whether they’re being ‘good’ mothers, and now the energy of thinking about safety is just going to add one more layer to the mental load,” she says.

”We’ve been told women are solely responsible for the future of their children so you’d better not mess it up ... People think [mothers] have these open choices, but they don’t. They’re constrained economically, attitudinally.”

Though she gains great satisfaction from her career as a registered psychologist south-west of Sydney, Alysha-Leigh Femeli says she has felt this tension between leaving young children in care – even during “a very slow transition” – and the fulfilment of re-engaging in her work.

Psychologist Alysha-Leigh Femeli said it is rare to see a perinatal client who doesn’t experience guilt about returning to paid work, and using childcare.

She has treated families in the perinatal period for 13 years and is told by clients that they are so distressed by the recent child abuse allegations they are questioning if they should keep working.

It is a sentiment voiced by one distressed mother interviewed on TV as she collected her toddler from Creative Gardens, the childcare centre at which alleged offender Joshua Dale Brown worked in south-western Melbourne.

As the Victorian Department of Health prepared to text families of 1200 children aged five months to two years old, urging them to arrange STI tests for their babies and toddlers, the mother said she was questioning whether she should work.

Femeli says this is not an uncommon response. “Women are terrified, really terrified, and I’ve had people wondering whether they should just pull their kids out of care because they feel so scared – this feels like something they hadn’t even anticipated as an option.

“For a lot of women, working is a really important part of caring for their mental health,” she says. To have a break from [constantly caring for young children] can also be “an important part of making sure they are wonderful mothers,” she says.

Even so, “I found it really hard going back to work, I had families [to see] but I felt heartbroken at the idea I would leave my babies …

“But I would always come back from work feeling really rejuvenated, like I’d gotten to use my brain; it was important for me to do be able to do that.”

Femeli, a member of the Australian Association of Psychologists, describes the “spike of anxiety” mothers may already feel when returning to work, and says it is driven by stubborn gender stereotypes.

“There is still a societal expectation that women will be the primary caregivers regardless of how much they are working: so you are going to ‘fail’ somewhere, either your employers or your responsibilities as a caregiver,” she says.

“I don’t think I have a perinatal client who hasn’t come with some level of guilt because they’ve had to go to work.”

Unlike those in some European and Nordic countries, Australian culture expects mothers to take responsibility for childcare even when they are working and the mother’s income is vital, she says.

Yet mothers tell Femeli their sense is that their employment is considered more “disposable”.

Though the gender equality movement has fought to shift assumptions about parenting and women’s right to participate in employment, clients feel the message still received is, “when a woman comes back to work, it’s almost like someone is doing her a favour by letting her come back”. And this is concerning.

Femeli is among those calling for better support for mothers and families as they juggle financial imperatives and their need to provide quality care to babies and very young children, as she believes getting women into work has been a higher priority than supporting mothers and children.

She urges mothers who may feel consumed with worry or guilt as a result of recent news to realise it is not normal and to speak to their GP rather than decide on changing their work pattern while feeling unsettled.

As rates of young mothers working full-time increase, workplace gender equality consultant Prue Gilbert says corporate women are also reporting rising feelings of guilt, more so than in previous years.

“We are hearing in coaching that women are returning to work earlier [after having babies] than they have done in the past, and are more likely to be going back full-time,” says Gilbert, chief executive of the workplace/parents consultancy Grace Papers.

Prue Gilbert, chief executive of the workplace/parents consultancy Grace Papers.Credit: Eddie Jim

On May 15, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released data showing women’s participation in the workforce had reached a record high of 63.4 per cent. A general rise in employment participation “was strongest for women workers, increasing by 65,000, including 42,000 full-time jobs”.

“The data indicates the federal government’s commitment to Early Childhood Education and Care and working women’s rights is helping more women to find and stay in secure jobs,” the bureau stated.

Gilbert says feelings of guilt came through as she reviewed coaching insights: “Guilt kept on coming up in themes. We haven’t heard it so strongly in quite a number of years.”

She wonders if the earlier work return, driven by economic uncertainty and organisational restructuring, is contributing.

Ironically, use-it-or-lose it parental leave policies for fathers, which mean they need to take their entitlement within the first 12 months of the baby’s life or forfeit it, are contributing to mothers’ earlier return to employment.

This phenomenon has also crossed the radar of the Assistant Minister for Social Services, Ged Kearney.

“I went back to work seven weeks after my twins were born – it was a difficult choice, but the right one for me,” Kearney says. “What made things even harder was the judgment I faced – it’s horrible that in the 2020s we’re still having this conversation.

“No parent should feel guilty for going or not going back to work and every parent deserves to know their children are safe and cared for.”

Parenting advocate Georgie Dent, of The Parenthood, says it is a luxury position for households to survive on one income, and a national early childhood commission should be created to provide childcare safety oversight.Credit: Steven Siewert

As her government prepares to bring legislation to parliament to cut off funding to early education centres that put profit over child safety, Georgie Dent continues to put pressure on it to create an independent national early childhood commission, as recommended by the Productivity Commission’s landmark review.

It would oversee safety, quality, access, workforce and funding, and ensure children are protected and services are accountable – reassurance parents need.

“For so many households with young children, they are having a really hard time: financially, economically ... it’s a luxury position to be able to stay afloat on one income,” says Dent.

“I have seen an unprecedented level of anguish and distress among parents … and been thinking about how it’s so cruel to add guilt on top of that.”

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