Does the great Aussie dream even exist any more or is it gone?

I’ve busted my arse for the past 20 years to work towards this dream and I’ve never been quite so miserable and disillusioned in my life, writes Nikki Osborne.

I am starting to think, in fact, nay, I’m convinced, that our current lifestyle formula is structured to maintain misery.

How do they do this? By perpetuating the myth that the great Aussie dream is a four-bedroom house and a pool in the suburbs. Sprinkle in a kid or two and BOOM, you’re living the dream!

I’ve busted my arse for the past 20 years to work towards this dream and I’ve never been quite so miserable and disillusioned in my life.

This column was originally published in April 2024 and has been resurfaced as part of The Courier-Mail summer columnists series.

I’ve realised, I’m trapped! Here I am, mortgaged up to my tits, handing 80 per cent of my income over to the bank each month, the other 20 per cent to Coles and power bills, while convincing myself that the monotony of maintaining this dream is all worth it.

Then there’s the school run. Every. Bloody. Day. Stuck in a queue of 4x4s that’ll never see a day off-road, spewing out fumes and dollar notes as the daily “kiss ’n’go” merry-go-round continues.

Oh and here’s my public service announcement, parents: “Kiss ’n’ go” doesn’t mean stop; exit the vehicle; open your child’s door like they’re an incapacitated Hollywood celebrity; open the boot; remove their bags then have five “I love you” cuddles. It’s KISS ’N’ GO! Or as I yell to the kids “tuck and roll”. We know you love your kids, now move your fat-arsed Kia Carnival and GO AND LIVE YOUR LIFE!

But we can’t live our lives can we? We are in the parent trap.

What is that? Well, my definition is that when you have kids you commit to make their childhood better than yours, even though your childhood – probably in the carefree decades of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s – may well prove to be the zenith of all humankind.

This blind and unrealistic commitment then ties you to the same location for the next 15-plus years in case – heaven forbid – we cause the little darlings the upheaval of moving and having to get used to a new school.

The first couple of years are great as you get to know the other parents and have an instant new social circle of friends all with the same shared horrors of parenting. But then, once this honeymoon period is over, you remember that your early 20s was fed a heady diet of exploring faraway places and the promise of life-changing experiences and you start to resent the very kids whom you’ve dedicated the past few years providing for.

This resentment feeds a need for short-term highs … the bigger house, the more luxurious car and exotic but invariably short holidays!

But this doesn’t fill the void of being tied to the one place year after year doing the same thing day after day … it never will!

But you press on, thinking that the void can’t be filled by you but rather by others’ envy of your success and happiness. And so continues the ladder to buy the more upmarket and conspicuous SUV, the bigger and more prominent house and more exotic brief annual holiday. And that holiday does become more and more brief because you have a more stressful high-paid job to pay for the ever-increasing cost of all of this.

We’re all striving for short-term highs, Nikki says, like bigger houses, luxurious cars and exotic holidays.

And there, my friends, is the parent trap or “getting tied down”, because kids have to attend school for 13-plus years.

And because you’re stuck and inevitably angry, you’re going to keep cheering yourself up with overspending and consigning yourself to a life of doing a job you probably don’t want to do so you can keep paying the mortgage on the house that you don’t really need! It’s a government conspiracy, man!

What are your thoughts?

Is the Australian Dream just a gateway to a nightmare?